Natural Ordermage

LXXVII

For Rahl, the next eightday was filled with more of what had gone before-copying reports, accompanying mage-guards on their rounds and duties, studying the Codex and his own copy of the Manual and answering Taryl’s questions, and sparring with Khaill and, occasionally, other mage-guards. Upon occasion, Taryl would watch the sparring. More often he did not.

Late on sevenday afternoon, as Rahl left the exercise room after a series of sparring bouts with Khaill, Davyl, and Chynl, he found Taryl outside in the corridor, clearly waiting for him. The mage-guard carried a small satchel.

“Ser?”

“You’re the best with a truncheon in Luba. Even Khaill admits it,” Taryl said mildly. “You’re better than most with a falchiona for a time.”

“Thank you, ser, but…that is hard for me to accept.” Rahl wiped the sweat from his forehead, wondering what Taryl wanted.

“Why is that so hard? You’ve obviously practiced for years.”

“There must be others…”

Taryl laughed. “There are. Some of the blades at Cigoerne would cut you up if you used a falchiona against them, but you’re close to holding your own with the truncheon against anyone.” He paused. “You realize that you’re using your order-senses in the sparring…”

“Not at first…” Rahl paused. “I mean, they’re not there when I begin…and they’re really still not there. I can’t think about it at all, or they’re gone.”

“How are you coming in regaining your control of your order-senses otherwise?”

“I can sense order and chaos now and again, and sometimes I can find my way without seeing. It comes and goes.”

The thin-faced mage nodded. “I’m not surprised. You’ve got order-energies wound in and around you so tightly that I’m surprised you can walk. Most mages would die for the amount of order that clusters around you.”

“Then why can’t I use them?” Rahl barely managed to keep from snapping.

“Let’s take a walk…outside, where no one else is around.” Taryl turned and headed toward the door at the end of the corridor.

For a moment, Rahl stood there. Was this going to be another meaningless and useless lecture, like so many he’d listened to over the past year? Would Taryl be just like the magisters after all? He hoped not as he hurried to follow the mage-guard.

Once on the flat ground south of the building, Taryl stopped. The sun was low in the western sky, just above the rugged mountains. He turned to face Rahl. “No…I’m not going to lecture you. You’re the type for whom lectures are worse than useless. I have another sort of exercise I want you to work on.”

Rahl nodded, grateful that Taryl would not lecture him but questioning silently exactly what the other had in mind.

Taryl withdrew two knives, still in their leather sheaths. “Catch.” He tossed one, then the other, to Rahl.

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Turn with your back to the sun. Leave them sheathed, but juggle them. Toss one in the air, then flip the other into the hand that tossed the first, and keep doing that. I want you to do this without trying to sense or control the knives with your order-skills. Use only your eyes and your hands. Eyes and hands. Don’t ask why. Don’t question. Just do it.” Taryl’s voice was calm, but firm.

Rahl turned so that the sun beat gently on his back and took a knife in each hand, still in their sheaths. He tossed the first one up, then tried to flip the other to his free hand, where he caught it awkwardly.

“Keep them moving. Don’t stop.”

Rahl managed two more tosses before he dropped one of the knives into the dirt.

“Pick it up and keep going.”

For the next several attempts, Rahl could only keep the knives in motion five or six times, but then he settled into a routine.

“Faster!” snapped Taryl.

Rahl dropped a knife.

“You need to pick up speed. Don’t ask why. Just do it.”

After a time, Rahl managed to keep the knives moving faster.

“Now…without stopping, turn and face the sun, but don’t look at it. Concentrate on the knives.”

Rahl managed the turn, if unsteadily, and kept the knives going.

“Concentrate on the knives. Close one eye, but keep looking with the other. Concentrate on the knives.”

Rahl kept going, but it was hard because with one eye it was harder to judge distance, and he staggered several times.

“All right. Catch them and stop for a moment. Don’t ask me any questions. Not a single one.”

Rahl was just happy to stop. Even though there wasn’t that much strength involved in the exercise, the air was warm, and he was sweating as much as he had while sparring. He blotted his forehead with the back of his left hand.

“Using order came easily and naturally to you, didn’t it?” asked Taryl. “Before you lost your memory, that is.”

“Yes, ser. For the things that I could do. For the others, I just couldn’t. I did tell you that.”

“The mountains look so dry from here, don’t they?”

“Yes, ser.” Rahl was puzzled by why Taryl was talking about the mountains, but he’d been ordered not to ask questions. He didn’t.

“When you collect water from all the mountains, even from the dry ones like those west of Luba, you can fill an aqueduct. It’s how you collect it that matters, and from how wide an area.” Taryl cleared his throat. “Now…take the knives from their sheaths. Set one aside and toss the other from hand to hand until you’re comfortable with the weight and balance. Just use your eyes and hands, nothing else.”

“Yes, ser.” Rahl tossed the single blade back and forth, watching as it crossed the space between his hands, the bare blade picking up an orangish red tinge from the sun low in the sky. A gust of wind whipped grit across his face.

“Keep tossing.”

Even with one eye blurring from grit in it, Rahl managed to keep the blade moving.

“All right. Stop and pick up the other blade.”

Rahl had the feeling he knew what was coming next, but he didn’t ask.

“Now we’ll start the first exercise all over again, with your back to the sun. You’ll need to be more careful, and if you can’t catch one by the hilt, let it drop. Just try not to drop them too often.”

“Yes, ser.”

Rahl was more than a little nervous. He’d never liked blades, and juggling two knives, even if they were only single-edged blades, didn’t help much. He dropped one blade immediately.

“You didn’t need to do that, Rahl.” Taryl’s comment was mild, almost resigned. “Start again.”

Handling two naked blades forced Rahl to concentrate all his attention on the blades, and still he kept dropping them.

“Rahl…”

He forced even greater concentration on the blade juggling.

Abruptly, he could sense everything around him-the blades, the order-force around Taryl, and even the dull redness around the blades.

“Keep juggling…”

Rahl tried, but the distraction of regaining his order-senses overwhelmed him, and he ended up dropping both blades into the sandy dirt. His order-senses vanished. “Oh…”

“You had your full order-senses for a moment, didn’t you?” asked Taryl.

“Yes, ser. But…how?” He realized he’d asked a question and stopped talking.

“Recluce doesn’t have the answer to everything,” Taryl said quietly. “Now…what did all that feel like?”

Feel like? Why did that matter? “Ah…I don’t know.”

Taryl sighed. “Too many mages think of order-senses as outside their bodies. For chaos-mages, in a way, that makes sense, because they need to maintain a separation from the body. Chaos can be extremely corrosive if it’s not handled properly. For an ordermage, it’s different. How you feel is important. Pick up the knives. You can rest for a moment, but then you’re going to do this again, and when you get the feeling of your order-senses, don’t try to use them or examine them. Just try to capture how they feel. Take in the feeling, just the feeling, nothing more.”

Questions boiled up inside of Rahl, and he looked helplessly at Taryl.

“No questions now. When we’re done, I may answer some. That depends on how well you follow my instructions.” After several moments, the mage-guard nodded. “Pick up the knives.”

Once more, Rahl was so distracted by the possibility that the exercise might help him regain his order-senses that he kept dropping the knives-once, twice, and then a third time.

“Rahl! Do you want to go back to being a checker?”

Rahl froze.

“You’re not following my instructions. You’re to concentrate on the knives and nothing else. Nothing! Do you understand me?”

“Yes, ser.”

“Then do it.”

Rahl took a deep breath, then put a knife in each hand and concentrated just on the knives. Toss…flip…toss…catch…

“Now…turn toward the sun. Don’t drop the knives.”

Rahl turned. Sweat was beginning to pour down his forehead.

Again…he had his order-senses.

“The knives…stay with the knives…stay with the knives…” Taryl’s voice was somewhere between order and plea.

Rahl could barely see with the sun in his face, but he kept working with the knives…trying to follow Taryl’s instructions…and somehow just trying to experience the feeling.

“Let the knives fall…follow them with your eyes, just your eyes…”

For several moments after the knives kicked up the dusty soil, Rahl could sense everything around him, but he made no attempt to use or explore that sense.

Another gust of wind hurled grit into his eyes, and they began to burn…and he lost his order-senses.

“Good.” Taryl actually sounded satisfied, to Rahl’s surprise.

“Ah…” Rahl stopped. Even asking if he could ask a question was a question.

“Yes. You can ask questions, but pick up the knives.” Taryl extended an oily rag. “You need to wipe them off as well.”

“Why…?”

“Why does this exercise work? What I did was get your mind and body focused on something else, but something hard enough that your order-senses might surface if you weren’t pushing them away by trying too hard to use them. That’s why you do better sparring after a while, especially when you’re working against someone good. What I had you do doesn’t work for everyone. There are different ways of learning to handle order. From what I’ve heard, Recluce tries to get everyone to learn it by reading and thinking. There’s a book. I imagine they gave you one-The Basis of Order. Not everyone can learn that way. You’re a natural ordermage. Someday, you might even become a full ordermaster. That’s if you’ll listen to me and follow instructions.” Taryl laughed ruefully. “You’ve been trying to think your way into regaining your abilities. That won’t work for you. Not in my experience, anyway.”

Rahl carefully wiped one blade clean and sheathed it, and then did the same for the second.

“Natural ordermages work better by feel, and you have to get the feeling for something. If you lock in the right feeling, it’s almost effortless. Otherwise…” Taryl shook his head.

“What should I do now? After the exercises, that is?”

“Don’t try to do anything with your order-sense. You may get flashes of it now, and you may not. If you do, just try to absorb the feeling. The more you can feel and identify that feeling, the sooner you’ll recover order-handling ability.” Taryl smiled. “You might want to get cleaned up before dinner.”

As Rahl walked toward the small cramped shower room, he wanted to shake his head. A mage-guard in the ironworks of Hamor knew more about how to help him than all the magisters in Recluce. How could that be, when Recluce was the bastion of order?